One Saturday, mid-November 1896, a small group of pioneering motorists set off in some of the first horseless carriages – their plan was to drive from the Metropole Hotel London to the Metropole Hotel Brighton. We know this now as the London to Brighton run.

Their aim was to demonstrate and promote the recently invented motor car. In addition, they celebrated the new Road Act, which that year raised the speed limit from 4mph to 14mph and removed the need for a man to walk in front of each motor vehicle waving a red flag. Quite a breakthrough for drivers of the day.

The cars taking part that day included those powered by electricity, steam and the internal combustion engine (petrol): back then it was a three horse race, technology wise. The internal combustion engine eventually won out of course. Fast forward to today and we take for granted the quite incredible travelling capability of modern cars. We Britons collectively drive 250 billion miles a year in our 30 million cars – all but 2,000 of which have internal combustion engines.

But the world is changing. Nobody can have missed the twin issues of Climate Change and fossil fuel depletion. Road transport in Britain is responsible for 20% of our CO2 emissions, the main Climate Change gas. About a third of our oil imports are burned in our vehicles – some 25 million tonnes each year. Two excellent reasons to make a change.

On top of that, and perhaps more importantly for your average motorist – petrol and diesel are escalating in price and will continue to do so as the world runs out of oil. It was only two years ago that we hit the £1 per litre mark, at the time quite a traumatic event – how much further past that are we now – and how much longer before we hit £2 a litre? My guess is less than 5 years.

So we need an alternative to the car as we now know it.

And it’s ‘back to the future’ in fact – with electric cars making a comeback. So far the numbers are pretty small: a little over 2,000 of them in Britain. But all the major motor manufacturers have now either launched a fully electric car, or will do so later this year. You can go out and buy one, they’re just like ‘real cars’ – with some obvious differences.

Upsides and downsides of course. Upsides are a lack of pollution from the exhaust and the possibility of filling your car up at home – even making your own fuel from solar panels on your roof. The main downside is range. Cars hitting the roads this year will have a range of up to 100 miles, and to many of us this sounds like nowhere near enough. There’s even a name for the feeling many people get when contemplating electric cars – ‘range anxiety’.

The fact is we’re all used to driving cars that can cross continents. But we don’t use that capability. In Britain, 99.3% of all car journeys are actually less than 100 miles. Range anxiety is thus misplaced, though still having a very real impact.

People are also concerned about a lack of charging facilities on the road, somewhere to plug in. There’s actually a chicken and egg problem going on – one of the big reasons more people don’t buy electric cars is due to a lack of places to charge-up and companies are not installing places to charge-up due to a lack of electric cars on the road.

And that’s where our Electric Highway comes in. It’s the world’s first national network of charging points – it’s for electric cars and it’s on Britain’s motorways. We’ve completed phase one already, joining up the cities of London, Exeter and Manchester. Phase two will be completed this year and will see ‘top up zones’ at every Welcome Break motorway services in Britain.

They’re currently free to use, all you need – apart from an electric car, van or bike, is to register with us for a free smartcard (to access the chargers). We’ve created the Electric Highway to kick-start Britain’s electric car revolution – because we thought it needed doing.

Later this year we expect to install the first of a new breed of very fast chargers – from flat to full in 20 minutes. At a stroke electric cars will have overcome their only real drawback – their ability to travel great distances, and refill very quickly. It’s an exciting time for electric cars – perhaps on a par with 1896, when the new Road Act made cars suddenly rather more practical as a means of transport.

Nationwide rapid charging will achieve the same thing for the electric car.

31 responses to “2012 – the Year of the Electric Car..?”

As welcome as innovations that’ll make electric cars a more viable option, I think in the end electric cars only pander to the mentality that we all need to have our own personal vehicles so we can get wherever we want whenever we want. I think that attitude is unsustainable, even if electric cars are cleaner. Still, that’s good news

rabar10

January 31, 2012 at 2:49 pm

“We’ve completed phase one already, joining up the cities of x, y and z.” Is this an editing slip? Which cities are already joined, precisely? Thanks!

Shame that your own marketing hype prevents you from giving recognition to the achievements of a small group of EV enthusiasts who built the first national charging network.

Please do let us know when your ‘network’ allows a production EV to travel around the UK while charging at a sensible rate… in 2015 maybe?

Dale Vince

February 5, 2012 at 10:55 pm

Hi Kevin, shame you continue to be so worked up about this issue. A better definition of ‘hype’ would be closer to home for you – the claim that 7 charging sockets in 7 hotels constitutes a national network of facilities. its a silly claim to make and keep making. I’m not sure what your problem is TBH.

I like to give credit where it’s due and recognise the efforts of a dedicated band of people who worked with Tesla to create the HPC network. This is a network that I use on a regular basis to travel around the UK.

When your network contains AC and DC fast charge capabilities that allow people to make meaningful journeys then I will praise that as well… until that time, I will join other EV drivers who find your 22kW AC Charging Posts an interesting but useless curiosity,

Dale Vince

February 8, 2012 at 10:23 am

Keven – credit where it’s due you say – having got wind of our plan to run LeJog and instal a national network – you dashed out to try and do it first (as you say elsewhere on the net).

Problem is in your haste you overlooked to do either job properly.

Says a lot about you and what drives this incredible bitchiness from you about ‘who did it first’.

But the truth is your handful of Hotels with sockets are little more than lifestyle destinations for weekends away, for Tesla drivers. Your insistence that it’s a national network is a joke.

Real production EVs are coming and a real national network is underway.

Hi Dale
Thank you for changing the minds of so many about green energy, I want to further change minds by entering an eletric car in the Le Mans 24hr race and other endurance races using a generator I have designed to prove that the electric car go the distance and at speed to compete with current Fossil/Bio fuel technology.
Can I get your help?

Is range anxiety really the biggest issue facing EV’s? For me it is really cost, specifically cost of batteries. You could easily avoid range anxiety by having a bigger battery, say 200 mile range, but this would make the cost of the car even more prohibitive. I don’t think that an 80-100 mile range is too bad and would be fine for many people, if the cost of such a car was comparable to an equivalent petrol/diesel, but currently it isn’t. As the cost of batteries comes down (by 75% by 2020 according to Stephen Chu), the car makers will have to make a choice whether to increase the range of their vehicles and keep the price the same, or to keep the range the same but reduce the price. My guess is that they’ll reduce the price, because as the price comes down so they’ll sell more vehicles, and the economies of scale will (hopefully) help battery and vehicle price come down further.

I’d buy a Nissan Leaf now if it was cheaper, or at least if the price differential was just a reflection of the lower fueling costs and no more, and just live with the range issue through mitigation measures like Dale’s Electric Highway.

Gillian Lacey

February 1, 2012 at 4:52 pm

How about just swapping the battery for a fully charged one at fuel stations, service stations or whatever. Eliminated the need for charging time and network issues. Just return the flat battery and pick upa full one – rather like calor gas.
job done

SARATHI ANUYAYI

August 11, 2012 at 12:50 am

This is a good point , Gillian ………do you know where the battery is on your Electric Car ?

At present , the battery is , batteries are , the main problem in this kind of transport for two main reasons , as I have so far understood it :

1 / Very high COST ……….so aren’t placed so as to be easily nick-able . Similarly , are not easily swopped over rapidly .

2/ Considerable BULK , for which space has to be found – and one solution has been to secrete them in thin panel – type sections unobtrusively , for example under the floor of the car. Again , rapid removal here presents a problem .

But I must admit that if there IS a way to work on this issue , it ought to be pursued . Thanks for raising an intelligent question , Gillian .

Hi Phil, cost is definitely an issue. But as with all technologies the cost is disproportionately high to begin with and early adopters will bear those costs – and with time, costs come down bringing more people into play.

To enable those early adopters (since we can’t affect the price of batteries ourselves) we’re tackling the very real issue of where and how fast to charge – to make these relatively expensive early cars – more practical.

I hope battery costs do fall as you quote, and I’m sure you’re right, in response manufactures will maintain range and cut the cost of cars. It makes sense that they would, since 99.3% of all car journeys in Britain are less then 100 miles. Why lug around the cost and weight of a 200 mile range, for the 0.7% of the time you might need it.

Cheers.

Chris

January 31, 2012 at 9:06 pm

I am currently looking at moving to a flat near London. When you’re done with the motorways please can you start installing these super fast charging points in the parking garages below/besides newly built apartment blocks? Some people don’t have easy charging at home, let a lone when they’re out and about.

I’m sure developers would jump at the chance to work with you on this as they are keen to be seen employing cutting edge eco-tech.

I also think you should be charging for this service if I’m honest. I would gladly pay a couple of quid for a full charge. It currently costs me around £50 to fill up my tiny Citroen C1! If the revenue is directly reinvested in rapidly expanding the network it’s worth every penny.

Thanks Chris, will bear this in mind. I expect our focus to remain on the motorways for the next year or two – much to be done there.

Cheers.

Gillian Lacey

February 2, 2012 at 7:24 pm

I have been told that legislation/aspiration is that all carparks will contain charging points for 3% of all spaces. Not sure when this is from and whether it will be retrofitted.

clawsout

February 3, 2012 at 6:09 am

Range anxiety is a more genuine concern in Australia where we have much greater distances between towns and cities – but even so, I’m in rural New South Wales and am not at all worried about running out of juice in the middle of nowhere.

What does worry me, and has kept me from going electric is the ridiculous Government fees and taxes on electric vehicles. I enquired and found it would be cheaper to buy a Tesla in Hong Kong, put it in a container, and ship it to Australia myself than to buy one in Sydney from the local distributor!?

This is absolutely crazy. The government “incentives” are one or two “green vehicle” parking spaces in major cities, and the allowance to drive in the taxi or bus lanes. Neither of which exist in the country. On the other hand they add several fees and charges that close to double the price of a Tesla (even though the Australian dollar is currently higher than the US dollar). Just ridiculous. A real incentive would be tax breaks for owning/driving electric vehicles, instead of adding significant cost penalties for those who are trying to lower their CO2 output.

I’m not sure if the UK Government is doing better in this regard than the Australian Government is – but it’s very frustrating situation Down Under.

Chris

February 3, 2012 at 12:30 pm

Hi Clawsout,

In the UK we can currently obtain a £5k government subsidy to buy an electric car. The annual road taxes in this part of the world were effectively polarised by the last government, which means the lowest emitting vehicles are free and the highest emitting ones are very expensive. The electric vehicle is of course free to tax annually (even taking into account power station emissions, they are relatively clean in terms of Co2/km), it is also exempt from London city congestion charge. That’s pretty much as far as we go! The only other incentive is the colossal price of petrol (approx £1.35/litre). I can’t believe it was at £1 only 2 years ago!!.. Surely we’ll go bankrupt on the back of increases like this?? ?!

Mark Tebbutt

February 9, 2012 at 4:32 pm

Dale as an occasional long distance Nissan Leaf driver (280 miles Chorley Lancs to Norwich 10hrs 50m heater off) I would love to hear more on the time frame location of the new faster / rapid chargers your planning. Are they part of the Nissan UK 60 odd rapid charger give away?

Electric cars are something I really believe in with a passion, I crave 2050 when the European government state all vehicles produced must be electric. However I have some questions that no one can provide any decent answers to so if anyone her can give them a go them your more than welcome (by the way there are no correct answers only opinions)

1. Electric cars work on batteries, however batteries used in electric vehicles are far from environmentally friendly so every electric car is adding to the problem. How can this be solved.

2. The cost of the electric vehicles is astronomic compared with second hand cars. If you can buy them on import for cheaper why are people not doing this?? You can buy electric 2 seater cars in china for as little as £3000 brand new and fully road working, 4-5 seater electric card for less than £10k, so where are they in the UK.

3. At the end of the power cable charging your environmentally (well kind of) car is a coal, nuclear or gas power station. The more cars on the road means the more large scale power stations that need to be built therefore the problem is just changed from burning oil to fossil fuels so how does this help the environment when the only people affected are the oil producers?

4. Whatever happened to the hydrogen economy? the hydrogen powered car was the thing of the future but has now disappeared as quickly as it arrived, will the electric car hold on and become a common reality?

Paul Verbinnen

April 6, 2012 at 12:28 am

I’ve come in really late to this thread & the others, (devoted a whole evening to catching up) but I know of a man who can answer your questions.

Robert Llewellyn (actor, writer) has a number of blogs about EVs and also transmits a podcast called ‘Fully Charged.’ I really recommend it, as he explains things that even I can understand!

Zero Carbonista

This blog is about answers to the big questions - how will we keep the lights on, what kind of cars will we drive (will we drive?) and how will we feed ourselves - in a post oil world, and a world where we can't afford to keep burning things and throwing things away. Energy, Transport and Food are the three big issues.